I also found much to like about their fourth and fifth albums (More Fun in the New World and Ain't Love Grand, IIRC). I know almost nothing about what any of them have done since 1985, but they were great. NC.

At first I felt a little disappointed upon finally seeing them live, but their sound became increasingly more agreeable and hypnotic as the concert continued. They have a huge number of "hits" to draw upon, more than I ever realized previously. Very cool, walked away happy.

I'm sure Billy Zoom loves playing in that band, but the guy appears to be living in a different universe on stage! It's like he's still a journeyman after thirty-five plus years.

I also found much to like about their fourth and fifth albums (More Fun in the New World and Ain't Love Grand, IIRC). I know almost nothing about what any of them have done since 1985, but they were great. NC.

Yeah, I went back to those 4th and 5th records and they were pretty great, as well. Not where my head was at when they came out, so I gave them short shrift. Was wrong about that.

I just saw them last weekend in Philly. They started the set with some of the slower and mid-tempo stuff from the later records, it was fine. It occurred to me that John Doe basically invented the Americana genre.

About midway through the set, they played older punkier stuff, starting with "Los Angeles", and the room just exploded.

A much better live band than I expected.

I basically grew up listening to them, their early records were part of my punk rock awakening in 1979 - 82. They were a mainstay, a standard bearer. I think I took them for granted, and by 1983 or so they had started to slow down and branch out into different stuff. But man, that early stuff still rips, and the energy and tension in those songs is undeniable. Billy's touch and timing are incredible.

Billy is an old man now, 68 years old, and he has to sit on a stool on stage, so you don't get the stance. But he still rips shit up. But I saw Les Paul, and he had to sit down too, so I'm not holding that against him.

Under the Big Black Sun is my favorite X record because it's the first X record I heard, and that's because it was the first X record I stumbled across in the podunk Western PA record shop where many of my formative purchases were made. (This is way pre-Internet; buying records on a whim and poring over liner notes and thank-yous to get clues into the next purchase.)

My ears were full of the stuff that was geographically closer to home -- lots of insular, self-perpetuating East Coast hardcore. X was a telegram from the West Coast informing me of an even wider world. The barre chords and progressions in stuff like "Real Child of Hell" anchored the songs to familiar turf, but the split-gender harmonies were amazing and alien and always just a few steps to the left of pitch-perfect; the C&W licks colored the songs a hot, dusty, Southwestern shade of wistful; the production (in which Ray Manzarek inexplicably left my dad's record collection for mine) was a little more dry and formal than I dug, but very much alive and rewarding on headphones. I promptly bought up everything else in their catalog and, from those liner notes and thank-yous, discovered a whole other world of equally weird, totally different stuff happening out West.

So, long story short = total Not Crap, and totally essential to shaping my tastes and making me question and look beyond the small world I knew at the time. When Born Against covered "Riding with Mary," all I could do was smile and nod.